Asymmetrical Information

Interesting post. It should have occurred to me long ago what the reasons were for the U.S. not to be structured like a typical Europeans social democracy. Now someone says it so clearly.

The fact that social norms play a significant role in the success of welfare states also point to these systems' weakness. As soon as the populations of these historically homogenous countries turn heterogenous due to immigration, the social norms soon become fractured between rival communities. There is a direct correlation between the emerging heterogeneity of national populations and the rise of nationalistic or anti-immigrant political parties. This is often the result of a sense of betrayal within the native population that the benefits of the welfare state was intended to complement the existing social norms, but no longer are. Immigrants from radically different backgrounds were not supposed to be part of this closed system. Native citizens begin to see immigrants as a threat to this originally happy balance.

I remember saying something like this more than 15 years ago. The way I put it was that "the gene pool of Sweden isn't toe deep in a bath tub". But I'm sure I wasn't the first. Very interesting observation, but not particularly novel ;-).

To be fair, Kaiser does identify those same factors that Zimrad Ahmed does. Kaiser says:

Finland is as big as two Missouris, but with just 5.2 million residents -- fewer than metropolitan Washington. It is ethnically and religiously homogeneous. A strong Lutheran work ethic, combined with a powerful sense of probity, dominates the society. Homogeneity has led to consensus: Every significant Finnish political party supports the welfare state and, broadly speaking, the high taxation that makes it possible.

What I objected to in the article was that Kaiser apparently has virtually no appreciation for the offsetting advatages of a large, heterogenous United States. He says:

Ours is a society driven by money, blessed by huge private philanthropy, cursed by endemic corruption and saddled with deep mistrust of government and other public institutions. Finns have none of those attributes.

America is driven, cursed, and saddled? What a surprise coming from a Washington post editor… His sense of American blessings is distictly impoverished -- 'huge private philanthropy' apparently exhausts the list.

Bruce Bawer (a gay American man living in Norway) has come away from the experience of living in Scandinavia with a more expansive sense of America:

Living in Europe, I gradually came to appreciate American virtues I’d always taken for granted, or even disdained—among them a lack of self-seriousness, a grasp of irony and self-deprecating humor, a friendly informality with strangers, an unashamed curiosity, an openness to new experience, an innate optimism, a willingness to think for oneself and speak one’s mind and question the accepted way of doing things. (One reason why Euro- peans view Americans as ignorant is that when we don’t know something, we’re more likely to admit it freely and ask questions.) While Americans, I saw, cherished liberty, Europeans tended to take it for granted or dismiss it as a naïve or cynical, and somehow vaguely embarrassing, American fiction. I found myself toting up words that begin with i: individuality, imagination, initiative, inventiveness, independence of mind. Americans, it seemed to me, were more likely to think for themselves and trust their own judgments, and less easily cowed by authorities or bossed around by “experts”; they believed in their own ability to make things better. No wonder so many smart, ambitious young Europeans look for inspiration to the United States, which has a dynamism their own countries lack, and which communicates the idea that life can be an adventure and that there’s important, exciting work to be done. Reagan-style “morning in America” clichés may make some of us wince, but they reflect something genuine and valuable in the American air. Europeans may or may not have more of a “sense of history” than Americans do (in fact, in a recent study comparing students’ historical knowledge, the results were pretty much a draw), but America has something else that matters—a belief in the future.

http://www.hudsonreview.com/BawerSp04.html

Mr. Ahmed's facile assertion as to the lack of social solidarity and the power of norming leads to wonder what part of Boston he lives in. He might trying running a gay pride parade through south Boston and see how far it gets. He has lived, what, maybe one generation in America, and he thinks he knows all about the place.

I also spent my time in Scandinavia, in my case Sweden, and Bruce Bawer is dead on the money. He happens to be repeating things that Scandinavians used to say when they compared Americans and themselves, back when they still had living relatives in the US that they actually knew. Some of the differences he cites are purely cultural and also align with ethnic stereotypes of Scandinavian-Americans.

finland (and sweden) sounds like small town america ,whose children cant leave fast enough for the big city and the ability to live a life uncondemned by the neighborhood..

Slocum,

Thanks for providing the link for the Bawer article, it's truly a must read. I'll comment on this subject a bit more on forthcoming blog post.

www.architectureandmorality.blogspot.com

Interesting post.

It is true that we will not be able to create a society as egalitarian and utopian as Sweden or Finland (or Japan) as racism against minorities inherently creates aversion to egalitarian policies.

It is much easier to provide social benefits to those less fortunate than us if they look like us and speak like us. It seems more difficult, sadly, to extend social benefits to those whose skin is not the same colors as ours.

It is true that we will not be able to create a society as egalitarian and utopian as Sweden or Finland (or Japan) as racism against minorities inherently creates aversion to egalitarian policies.

Sheesh, way to miss the point. The problem is that the United States is nothing BUT minorities. There is no coherent cultural or ethnic majority here. Racism is of trivial importance compared to the fact that people of the *same* race don't view themselves as having all that much in common.

Reducing ethnic differences to "skin color" is an American form of myopia due to our peculiar history.To take just one example:have we forgotten so soon that the externally indistinguishable Serbs,Croats and Bosnians were at each other's throats not so long ago? Re Scandinavia: I have heard that Danes tend to regard the Swedes as a humorless, self-righteous bunch. Anyone know if this is true?

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